


Hi-kage

by WahlBuilder



Series: As The Old Gods Before Us [4]
Category: Mars: War Logs, The Technomancer (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Technomantic Culture, set Abundance on fire, twenty headcanons in a trench coat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 16:34:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17984711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WahlBuilder/pseuds/WahlBuilder
Summary: The sun rises. The sun sets. Temperance watches it closely, and others wonder.





	1. Sunrise

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Children of a Lesser God](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17314571) by [Modlisznik](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Modlisznik/pseuds/Modlisznik). 



The sun was rising.

“Why does he do it?”

Zach kept away from their… guest. Not because he was afraid or anything like that. (Although his rifle being torn out of his hands by something _invisible_ and disassembled right in front of his eyes and the parts flown into different directions… That had been a shock.)

(Not a single part had been scratched or bent out of shape, somehow.)

Perhaps it was the _presence_. It was as though… When you were born in the gutter and spent your whole life in the gutter, and then one day you got up to the fancy levels and threw your head back — and suddenly you were _aware_ of the giant dome over your head, so huge and far away that the scale and perspective were screwed and you couldn’t even take in just how big it was.

Somehow, that presence soothed the creature.

He’d seen traveling merchants humming to ostriches to calm them. Ostriches were always eager to knock you off, and a panicking or angry ostrich was… You better get out of its way.

Zach was confused.

(The creature was calm — except when _he_ moved too close to Sean, then the creature prickled and snarled, _Mine_ , and he didn’t even _want_ to hold it back, but he had to and he tried to — and then Sean looked at him, only at him, and the creature rumbled but retreated.)

“Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

Zach glanced at Sean to determine whether he was serious. Since Sean was looking at the lone figure (sitting cross-legged right on the rocks, showoff, didn’t sand get _everywhere_?), results of Zach’s analysis were inconclusive.

Zach turned to look to the east instead (not at the figure). The sun was creeping up like a bastard prepared to do a little knifing.

(Anton did away quickly with such bastards if they threatened him and his.)

They were safely tucked in the shadow of a train station — but the lone figure was not.

“How _could_ I?” he murmured. It was embarrassing, perhaps, that he was so… reluctant to approach Temperance. (Would that humming/purring/singing be louder if he got closer to Temperance?)

“He could teach you many things,” Sean sounded amused. Traitorous commander. “Things that I don’t know. Imagine that: you have a chance to absorb the knowledge both of the Abundancean technomancers and the Auroran.”

“He’s—” _a freak_ “—strange,” he said. “He keeps to himself.” He wondered whether his mentor would ask, _Don't you do the same?_ But it was not the same. It was not. He did that out of necessity — and Temperance…

“It is not his fault,” Sean said, as though hearing his thoughts, and Zach felt a brush of… _something_. Sean’s touch, without a physical touch. “It is the world that leaves you homeless, makes a prisoner out of a scholar, makes a wonder think he’s crazy, treats a person like a _thing_ …”

“Makes _you_ a killer,” Zach finished, looking at Sean.

Sean’s eyes were blue like the sky at the east.

The sun rose.


	2. Sunset

The sun was setting.

A lone figure was walking toward the west where the heat was blurring the air still, to make sure the sun set properly.

“Ἴψοι δὴ τὸ μέλαθρον ἀέρρετε τέκτονες ἄνδρες. Γάμβρος εἰσέρχεται ἴσος Ἄρευι—”

“—taller than tall men,” finished the voice near Sean.

Sean glanced at Tenacity. There was much more to the hunter than met the eye — and Temperance’s initial assessment was right in a strange way: the hunter was a hound, too.

Despite what most people thought, the Martian hounds’ loyalty was not easy to earn — so many people dealing in and with hounds even didn’t try. To raise them in fear was much easier. (You had to choose the point at which you put them down, however.)

But if you worked hard and managed to win their loyalty, they stayed loyal for life — and they had very long lives, potentially endless, if not for the eventual crush of their armor or exhaustion at yet another moult.

“A sayer once said that religions are born in the desert, but I say, when you see something like this,” Tenacity nodded at the distant figure, “gods are born.”

“He is not a god.”

The figure stopped by a fallen pillar of rock, and, folding one leg under himself, sat down. Wind swirled sand around him. The heat didn’t bother him, and the blur of air lent an otherworldly quality.

“Look at him closely, Sean, and try to repeat it.”

Sean looked, and knew what he saw. “He is a human being. He can be hurt, he can be killed.” He turned to Tenacity again. “He is not untouchable.”

Tenacity lingered, then turned away from that lone figure. “He is, Sean. Everything that is different, is unknown; everything that is unknown, is a threat. The unknown must be subjugated, claimed, picked apart; the threat must be eliminated. Humans are animals capable of cruelty, technomancer. They would hunt him because they can never understand him. Just look at me. I am the most cruel of them all.”

“You are not,” Sean said quietly, but the hunter had already turned his back — to him, and to the one making certain the light retreated.

The sun set.


End file.
